Rachel Katz often shares her cooking and baking with other people. After a time, people began to tell her that she should start a food blog. While Katz decided a blog would be too much to handle whilst being a full-time graduate student, she figured Instagram would be a manageable platform. So last summer while she was working one job and had relatively free evenings, she started her food Instagram, Fork in Progress.
On the account, Katz shares photos of the recipes that she’s tried. Unlike many other food accounts, her unfiltered photos project accessibility and make anyone scrolling feel like they could get in their kitchen and make the same meal.
The recipes that Katz tries are not necessarily easy, but she believes basic kitchen confidence can be applied to make more complicated recipes. She looks for recipes with very specific instructions that she can follow along with. She also looks for versatile recipes that she can add her own flavours to. In her captions, she highlights her innovations and provides tips.
One benefit to Instagram for her is the interactivity. It is easy for her followers to ask her questions and provide feedback. The platform also makes it possible for her to share step-by-step videos that break down the recipes into easier steps. This is to prove to people that anyone can learn how to cook delicious dishes.
“I was frustrated with a lot of students… saying ‘oh I have no time to cook’ or ‘I don't like cooking’… [But] food is so important, food is delicious and there's a kind of pride that you get from making your own food that you don't really get from anything else,” Katz said.
Katz understands how difficult balancing food with student life can be. The McMaster grad lived in residence in her first year where the meal plan limited the choice she had over what she ate. In her second year, she shared a six-person student house with a tiny kitchen. In both years, she didn’t feel like she had a fully functional space where she can cook her own meals.
For Katz, this resulted in patterns of disordered eating. In her second year, she committed to recognize these patterns in herself so she can create healthier eating habits. Preparing her own meals has been one tool in repairing Katz’s relationship with food.
In her third year, Katz moved into a two-person apartment with a nice kitchen. In her new kitchen, Katz explored cooking more. Working at the Silhouette also encouraged her as she began to regularly bake for the office. This practice allowed her to receive feedback on her food and grow as a baker.
“I don't use words like clean… or like detox, cleanse… [T]here are all of these other food bloggers out there who use those lines and a lot of recipe bloggers who have these crazy extravagant recipes. But there wasn't really anyone to fulfill the student niche for people who wanted to cook actual meals but didn't really know where to start,” Katz explained.
While developing a healthy relationship with food is important to Katz, food is also a tool that she uses in her relationships with others. Cooking is an activity that she likes to do with family and friends. Her food-related memories stretch all the way back to her childhood.
Katz grew up eating a lot of homemade meals. She is inspired by her mother, who is an accomplished home chef and baker. Not only does she adore the chocolate chip cookies that she grew up eating, but she also admires her mother’s diligence. Her mother can spend months trying to perfect a recipe.
Now an adult, Katz is making her own food memories, many of which include food she’s made for others. For her, cooking for people is a way of shaping their experiences for the better. By making a caramel corn cake for her partner’s birthday, she was able to make the day more memorable. When she makes her mother’s birthday cake this year, she will make that day more special.
However, as the name of her account indicates, Katz is still growing her skills in the kitchen. She wants her followers to continue learning, experimenting and trying new things.
“[H]aving a name that has associations of things that are not quite perfect, that I'm still learning but it doesn't mean that I don't know anything, I think… that embodies the mentality that I'm hoping I can encourage people to take with food and feeding themselves,” said Katz.
For this reason, Katz is not focused on monetizing Fork in Progress, as she and her followers operate within a student budget, she does not want to promote products that are inaccessible. While she would consider a column in a publication, she believes the account can only remain authentic by staying fairly small.
As long as she’s a student, Katz wants to continue spreading positive messages about food and cooking. She wants Fork in Progress to show students that they can make their own cakes and eat them too.
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You can find the written recipe and a bit more backstory behind it over on his blog. Our full interview with him also features insights into the food culture of Vietnam and his life in Hamilton.
https://www.facebook.com/TheMcMasterSilhouette/videos/10155755591735987/
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By: Christine Chow
Coined as a portmanteau from the words “study” and “Tumblr,” a “studyblr” is exactly what it sounds like: a Tumblr blog used for the purposes of studying. While many types of Tumblr blogs exist, ranging from hipster to fandom to social justice blogs the way stereotypical cliques mark their territory in a high school cafeteria, the studyblr is a strange attempt at reconciling the polar opposites of academics and procrastination (by means of social media).
As opposed to the average gifset, studyblrs tend to post or reblog aesthetic pictures of personal workspaces. These are often filtered shots of desks topped with nice plants, glossy computer screens, post-its, and neatly arranged sets of notebooks. Other reblogs show close-ups of notes in a combination of different colours and fonts, surrounded by an array of classy pens.
The obvious judgment is to dismiss these blogs as pointless. Reblogging or liking pictures of other people’s study set-ups in no way helps you get your own studying done, and if you’re too busy ooh-ing and aw-ing over the aesthetics of someone else’s workspace, trying to capture the perfect angle of your own, or beautifying your notes, then you’re wasting valuable time you could otherwise be using to mentally process what you missed out on during that lecture you fell asleep in.
However, if you’re like the majority of the student population, you’ve probably already come to terms with your inherent inability to stomach the multitude of information that gets vomited up by the course syllabus. You sit for hours on end in the same spot, staring at the same generic word document of notes you’ve managed to compile over the span of the term and flipping through the same tasteless PowerPoint slides your professor has probably recycled from last year. By comparison, venturing into the depths of Mordor seems like a much more appealing task.
A closer look at the Studyblr community reveals a group of like-minded individuals who are willing to empathize with the chronic symptoms of studying. In addition to sharing pictures, bloggers also share solid note-taking tips. For instance, how to start a bullet journal: a current popular technique for organizing all your tasks and to-do lists by code. Further investigation reveals self-care tips for mediating study stress, as well as favourite stationary types and methods of condensing information that have helped individual bloggers succeed.
Tumblr’s rise to fame in the past couple of years is accorded not just to its standing as a social media platform, but to its creativity and adaptability for multiple demographics – a metaphorical Room of Requirement. Though the effectiveness of its “study group” aesthetic is definitely questionable, its unique attempt to incorporate what all students dread into a leisure activity ought to be admired. Everyone studies differently, so there’s no harm in trying out different studying methods until you find out what works best for you.
Check out these studyblrs:
Photo Credit: Pretty Studying
